Ideas and questions

So first the ideas:

A Curtain: blocks sight but let pets go through. Bricks could deactivate it(break the stick and the curtain fall down).

Tool, Battery: Can be used to power electric floors or open circuits, but don't have enough power to hold trapdoors.I saw many powered Doors lately at the start or commits with dogs and turned off "fake" electronic floors. So you could use it to hold a door closed or turn on a floor where you are sure that this is a dog commit. I think a price from 400 to 800 would be balanced for this tool.

And now my questions:

What is the most compact 2 bit-clock that repeats and have 2 entrances at top for each signal?

and

What is the best way or most efficient or most compact way for a pitbull hallway.(To protect his family)

What is the best way or most efficient or most compact way for a pitbull hallway.(To protect his family)

I don't think an universal optimal solution exists. Given the space you allocate to protect your family, try different layouts and for each one, think about what is the minimum cost (guns/club/explosive/etc.) a robber would have to spend to get to your family. Look around the forum, many people post their house design after they die, you'll get many ideas...

Re: Ideas and questions

Re: Ideas and questions

Not until now! I have like 40 forum posts a day to keep up with.... sorry!

Curtains are interesting. Someone else proposed something like that a while back. Though... I'm wondering what kind of interesting designs could be possible with curtains. For a dog to come out, it has to see you first somewhere else (because the curtain blocks the dog from seeing you). So what is the value of hiding the fact that a dog is back there and about to come out? Or hiding what else might be back there? Why would you want to do that? Castledraft example, please (use a horizontal and vert wires in place of curtains, maybe, to demonstrate).

Also thought about a battery in the past. As a way to "mess with" electronics beyond just snipping wires... actually powering them. But this felt way over powered, because you could bypass some things directly. Though maybe not.... even if you could bypass a trapdoor with a battery, people could "hide the wires" deep behind stuff and prevent you from applying the battery. Just like they hide the wires to a door to prevent you from just snipping the wire to the door.

I'm thinking that a battery could only be attached directly to wires, right? So more compact designs would also not be vulnerable to a battery being inserted. Or maybe it could also be attached to electric floors?

Re: Ideas and questions

jasonrohrer wrote:

Not until now! I have like 40 forum posts a day to keep up with.... sorry!

Curtains are interesting. Someone else proposed something like that a while back. Though... I'm wondering what kind of interesting designs could be possible with curtains. For a dog to come out, it has to see you first somewhere else (because the curtain blocks the dog from seeing you). So what is the value of hiding the fact that a dog is back there and about to come out? Or hiding what else might be back there? Why would you want to do that? Castledraft example, please (use a horizontal and vert wires in place of curtains, maybe, to demonstrate).

Also thought about a battery in the past. As a way to "mess with" electronics beyond just snipping wires... actually powering them. But this felt way over powered, because you could bypass some things directly. Though maybe not.... even if you could bypass a trapdoor with a battery, people could "hide the wires" deep behind stuff and prevent you from applying the battery. Just like they hide the wires to a door to prevent you from just snipping the wire to the door.

I'm thinking that a battery could only be attached directly to wires, right? So more compact designs would also not be vulnerable to a battery being inserted. Or maybe it could also be attached to electric floors?

MMaster gave a good example, or you want to hide something you couldn't hide, cause camera angle and if the dog can't go through the floor, it would deactivate another trap so you need another camera angle and so much more space for maybe a simple trap. Something like this: http://castledraft.com/editor/Y6A81m

Like I said, the batterie shouldnt get enough power, to power a trapdoor(Don't know if this is possible with the state of electronics to differ between power and battery). That would be to strong and noone would use a ladder if you could attach it directly. So it would be only real useful at Powerdoor commits or you want to really burst 1 electric floor cause the power would not flow further trough simple electric floor traps(so cable cutter don't loose their sense).

Re: Ideas and questions

It depends on how curtains are implemented. If they close again after you move through them, then a maze of curtains would be possible, where you can't see a thing, and there might be dogs closing in on you every step (I don't think that's a good thing). If they stay open, it's harder to seriously exploitation, but there's still the case of not having a chance of knowing whether a dog is going to open that curtain when you're right beside it. Right now, you'll almost always have at least 1 more step of foresight

Re: Ideas and questions

I would say they should be open if the robber goes through(not pets). And if you know there could be some pet behind a curtain , you would just move until it shows up, and maybe open the sight behind the curtain too.

Re: Ideas and questions

the problem is, you can easily defend a door to be closed until you want it open: http://castledraft.com/editor/1gMwdHcost to see whats behind the door 3600/2400, but most robbers just want it to be closed, so attach a battery on that door would mean, that it stay closed. It would not change the crowbar cause it opens the close door not let it stay close.

I still think that trapsdoors are expensive enough and dangerous(for selfetest) to be only bruteforced by ladder or to go the way around.

See it that way, more items means, less bruteforce actions, more traps to counter items or something like that.

jasonrohrer wrote:

Also, we currently have 12 tools, which fits beautifully on a single screen in the grid view... That's not a great reason to avoid making it 13 tools, but it is a reason.

House owner can do more than 12 things =P

I could try to come up with more tools, but the battery was the most useful, balanced and did not replace other tools of my ideas. Let me sleep a night trough and maybe i get you a new 4 grid tool ;P

other things to add could be more voltage triggered plates, but from other sides, but i think its ok how it now is, cause it is more predictable.

Re: Ideas and questions

Re: Ideas and questions

CastleSeaNanners wrote:

Ok thank you, also does a wire bride like cross wires without them affecting?

Yes, a wire bridge allows the horizontal wiring and the vertical wiring to be independent from one another. They will pass through the same tile without their voltages affecting one another. This is useful for complex, compact circuits, or when you have two separate circuits that have to occupy the same area.

Re: Ideas and questions

Even better might be an EMP or electronic flare? The EMP could disable (for better or worse) all wiring within one step (North south east west) of the robber. I like the idea of an electronic flare that, when used, will show all wiring on the screen for approximately 1-2 seconds. Make it more expensive than wire cutters, maybe $500-600?

Unknown.... thanks BlipUnknown again because I thought I'd go on a no-tool revenge run on Blip. Silly me........Never risk what you aren't willing to lose.Be willing to lose everything.

Re: Ideas and questions

For the battery, it would be balanced by the fact that you can only attach it to bare wires.

A powered door is currently vulnerable to having its wire snipped, so house designers need to protect the wires that control their doors.

But wires leading to trapdoors currently don't need to be protected (because snipping them doesn't let you cross).

So, a battery could cost the same as the wire cutters, but do the opposite (cause a wire to become powered instead of breaking the power at that point).

And I supposed it would have to be applicable to electric floors too, just like the wire cutters.... though a battery "cooking" on an "on" electric floor would be a bit strange.

I'm hesitant to add either of these things, because though they add interesting wrinkles, I'm not sure that the game really needs them.

Also, we currently have 12 tools, which fits beautifully on a single screen in the grid view... That's not a great reason to avoid making it 13 tools, but it is a reason.

People will find a way to work around tools like this - there are already lots of houses that use multiple trapdoors without using any passable wired tiles. You would have to make sure that the battery can also be placed on red indicator lights, toggle/rotary/sticky switches, wires bridges acting in both directions and even voltage triggered and inverted switches. Even with all of this there would only be a very small amount of commonly seen traps that this would be effective against and all it would do is make these no longer appear meaning the battery would probably become redundant. There are times when I think "a voltage detector is just what I need right now!" but they are so far and few between that I would never actually take one into a robbery. I think the same would end up happening for the battery.